An Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper From The Perspective Of Lacan's Theory Of Discourses

The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the famous American feminist writer Sherlock Perkins Gillman's representative works based on Gillman's personal experience about the female tragic fate of life in a patriarchal society.The novel is written in the first person,“I”.The heroine in the novel suffers from depression after giving birth to a child,and her husband is a physician,i.e.the symbol of authority and profession.Through a series of the narrator's reactions to the environment,the story shows a feminist reflection on society and life,and explores the theme of female desire for freedom and independence in her awakening of self-consciousness.For this novel,Scholars at home and abroad mainly focus on the research of feminism,resistance and awakening after the oppression of female,and so on.Few people analyze the operating mechanism of power within the discourse from the perspective of signs,or discuss how female becomes insane under the oppression of authority.Jacques Lacan's theory of discourses gives us a possibility to analyze the above problems from the perspective of semiotics,and now this thesis tries to use this theory to analyze The Yellow Wallpaper.On the one hand,it is the first attempt to apply this theory to the analysis of a specific literary works.On the other hand,it discloses how male and medical authorities use discourses to rule others,how female is insane under such oppression,and the possible therapeutic discourses.Influenced by Saussure and Foucault,Lacan puts forward his theory of discourse,which is different from the “discourse” in linguistics.His discourse “surpasses the necessary structure of speech that appears incidental more or less.” He describes the discourse as a social contact based on language.He also indicates that discourse as a structural system cannot be confined in the category of linguistics,but must be defined in the relationship between discourse and subject.Lacan shows us a complex set of discourse structure and discourse operating mechanism,and talks about the power operation of discourse and the effect that discourse and power may cause in the subjects.Discourse in Lacan can be regarded as a structure of social relations,and different discourses represent different social relations.At his seventeenth seminar,in The Other Side of Psychoanalysis,Lacan sets up four different positions in the discourse structure,and thus leads to four different discourses and the four positions are: agent,other,truth,production.When the four factors in discourses turn 90 degrees in turn,the four new discourses will be obtained accordingly.The four discourses are the four possible positions in the intersubjective communication network and the four possible social contact forms.The research of this thesis is different from the previous studies,which applies Lacan's theory of discourses to analyze the dialogue in the novel and the power operating mechanism of internal structure of Master Discourse,University Discourse,Hysterical Discourse,and Analyst Discourse.This paper discusses how male uses words to exert their power in a patriarchal society,how doctors exert their power,how crazy people express their resistance,and how we are supposed to solve them.Applying the discourse theory to analyzing the conversation in the novel is a theoretical attempt.The first type of discourse in the novel is the male discourse in the novel,also called Master Discourse,in the patriarchal society.Master occupies the position of the master signifier,and his position will decide his authority.The expression of University Discourse in the novel is the doctor's discourse of the heroine's husband and her elder brother.At this time Master Discourse exerts power on the patient with the face of knowledge.Under the oppression of Master Discourse and University Discourse,the heroine has become a split subject.That is to say Hysterical Discourse is a rebellious female discourse after awakening.Analyst Discourse is the opposite side of Master Discourse.It is a critical discourse of Hysterical Discourse.By analyzing Hysterical Discourse,the analyst can get information and knowledge,find the problem and make the disease disappear.Through the above analysis,the thesis finds that the husband through his master signifier occupies the main position,and has the absolute authority to impose power on his “slave”.The doctor controls his wife's activities and thoughts through the hidden power of knowledge.The identity of his wife is being-in-the-world of Hysterical Discourse.Under the authority of the husband,the wife becomes crazy,and puts forward her resistance.In the process of resistance,the discourse is worth analyzing by analysts.After understanding the patients' words,symptoms and thoughts,analysts put forward the solution.Analyst Discourse plays an important role in modern society,which makes the analyst listen to the sound of patients,instead of suppressing them,find a way to solve the problem from their words.It is a useful theoretical attempt to apply Lacan's theory of discourses to analyzing specific novels.The theory provides a new perspective for the extension of Lacan's theory of discourses and the exploration of power operating mechanism of internal structure in various discourses.